Thursday, September 8, 2016

UCLA Study: The Golden State's Healthcare is 70% Socialized

This year, taxpayers will cover about 70 percent of what is spent on health care in California, according to a new analysis released Wednesday by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Many people assume that the U.S. health care system is primarily supported by private dollars, such as insurance premiums from employer-based coverage, said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the study’s lead author.

But that’s no longer the case, at least in California — mostly because of its massive expansion of Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid, he said.

“There’s this myth that we have a mostly privately funded health care system, but we’re approaching a point in which almost three quarters of this system is funded by public money,” Kominski said. “Now a question to ask ourselves is: when do we reach the tipping point and say ‘this is essentially a public system?’”

Of $367 billion estimated to be spent on health care in the state in 2016, $260 billion will be from taxpayer money, according to the research.

Nationwide, public funds paid for about 45 percent of the country’s $3 trillion in health care expenditures in 2014 through public insurance programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and programs for low-income children, according to federal data. But that estimate may be too low — it’s probably closer to 65 percent as suggested in a separate national study, according to Kominski.